Our flight out was utterly uneventful. We both napped some. Rob read the NY Times. I wrote and got about 2000 words in.

And then we waited for our baggage to arrive. The staff seemed to be engaged in a slow motion Laurel and Hardy film, which anywhere else would have involved much running around trying to fix the multiple baggage carousels as they broke. But this is paradise, so they ambled from the first carousel to die. Then they ambled away. Sometime later, without an announcement the carousel next to us began revolving and lo! our flight number was now on the sign above it. En masse the passengers flocked to the new carousel. Four bags emerged.

It stopped.

The staff ambled back. They examined. Pondered. Then ambled away. We waited and then felt some relief when the buzzer over the carousel began to make its noise and flash. But as the minutes passed and nothing happened there was some question of whether they would move us to a different carousel.

The staff ambled back. One of them disappeared into the nether regions of the machinery, which would have given Hardy his cue to turn the belt back on, sending Laurel scrambling. In this case, we waited until he slowly emerged and ambled away. The buzzer began, slowly, and then built tempo like a diesel engine turning over on a cold day. It kept going for about a minute before the carousel started moving again this time with an added high squeal.

But no bags. The staff ambled back, stopped the machine and disappeared. Sometime later the buzzer began again, slowly revving up, and then it started to fail, doing half-buzzes or flickering. When the belt finally started moving again, bags came out packed tightly together, piled on top of one another. Rob’s bag tumbled down the ramp and slid toward us. And the carousel stopped again.

We waited for the staff to amble back. Once they arrived, they began manually extracting the bags from the conveyor. Mine was not far down the stack and so we were able to make our escape. I don’t know how much longer the other people had to wait.

Rob and I ambled outside to meet momk, who greeted us with leis.

Modern Mechanix » Puppets Made from Light Bulbs

Guido Daniele does amazing body paint. See that picture of the athlete? She’s naked. (Thanks to momk for this)

The Cube - An hour of experimental television produced by Jim Henson before the Muppets. (Thanks to Jeremy Tolbert for this one.)

We’re boarding now.

I’m sitting in the Portland airport and just realized that I left my spare computer batteries at home. I have a total of three batteries. This one has two hours of life. I’m figuring between this and my palm pilot I ought to be able to write for a good chunk of the five hour flight. It could be much worse. The battery I usually have in only has a half-hour life span.

I also have Jay Lake’s Trial of Flowers for when I run out of battery life.